BoomTown » Harry Potter

Microsoft's Vision of the Future–and the Inevitable Spoof

Kara Swisher — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:09:55 +0000

One of my favorite “world-of-the-future” videos recently has been one done by Microsoft Office Labs, because it does not seem ridiculously fanciful or impossible to imagine actually happening sooner than much later.

Part of an “Envisioning” series, the “Productivity Future Vision” video below sketches out a world of smartphones, touchscreens everywhere and a whole lot of innovative interacting.

The look is sleek and smooth–which is unusual for Microsoft (MSFT)–with a bit of “Harry Potter” whimsy, and all without falling into the trap of a lot of such imaginings and making the way we live someday seem like “The Jetsons.”

But, of course, the folks at IGN.com’s Sarcastic Gamer managed to find the perfect way to poke fun at the video from the software giant in a spoof that hit the target deftly.

Watch each and enjoy:

Law and Disorder: The Curse of the Winklevii

Kara Swisher — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:08:56 +0000

One thing that’s nice in these volatile times is that the Winklevoss identical twins–aka the Olympic rowing hunks whom Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg seems to have repeatedly dunked since college–can always be relied upon to create nonstop entertainment for those riveted to their increasingly kooky lawsuit against the hot social-networking site.

(Tyler Winklevoss is pictured here and Cameron Winklevoss is below.)

This week, the latest news came from a bizarre cut-and-paste technique that allowed the Associated Press to get redacted financial details of the settlement related to a lawsuit between Facebook and the Winklevosses, in which they alleged that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them.

The method of how AP got to the numbers–getting to the “blacked-out portions by copying from an electronic version of the document and pasting the results into another document”–was perhaps the most interesting piece of news in the hubbub.

That’s because the $3.7 billion valuation for Facebook uncovered Harry Potter-style in the court papers–although treated as new news by the blogosphere–was actually old news from a while back.

For those not paying attention, the legal document revealed that Facebook agreed to pay the Winklevoss-founded social site ConnectU $20 million in cash and 1,253,326 shares of common stock.

The worth of those shares depends on whether you are using Facebook’s “own appraisal” to set the value of the start-up at $3.7 billion or the fictional-from-the-get-go $15 billion from when Microsoft (MSFT) forked over $240 million for preferred shares in Facebook in late 2007.

(If you’re bored, you can play investigative reporter on the docs here too!)

In any case, it’s only the legal hijinks–either via rank incompetency or, more likely, creative leaking–that I want to know more about, especially since heretofore confidential information seems to keep seeping out of this case like some hole-plagued rowing shell.

Besides the invisible ink trick, there was also the “accidental” leak earlier this week by the law firm that once represented ConnectU against Facebook about how well it had scored for the Winklevosses.

In a marketing newsletter, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges bragged it had earned them the higher $65 million figure, based on the Microsoft valuation, rather than the lower Facebook one.

ConnectU fired Quinn Emanuel over the settlement–likely because the lower figure was the right one–and, presto, the new information suddenly emerges.

And last year, Zuckerberg was subjected to widespread ridicule after the Boston-based magazine 01238 got hold of all sorts of court-sealed goodies about his bad behavior while a student at Harvard University, where he created Facebook.

It just gets curiouser and curiouser.

Of course, the documents that still have not gotten leaked are the alleged “smoking gun” that shows Zuckerberg to be guilty and the Winklevii redeemed. While many on the twins’ side have persistently insinuated they exist, such proof has not surfaced as yet.

That’s why, until then, this whole legal circus remains a ship of fools.

To Err Is Human, to Live Divine: How Exactly No One Got It Right About Steve Jobs's Health

Kara Swisher — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:00:17 +0000

[UPDATED]

You knew it was coming, of course.

Since the blogosphere couldn’t actually kill him off–deeply lazy and incredibly wrong in insinuating that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was dying imminently–it turned around yesterday and declared him a liar for not saying he had a “hormonal imbalance” sooner.

Of course, Apple (AAPL) has also played along in this bizarre game, along with its defenders, who have all tried to pretend nothing is wrong with a man who clearly looks like he has had the stuffing knocked out of him because of his long-running health issues.

Still, the worst offender, of course, was the original story in Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz last week about Jobs’s keynote pullout from Macworld, using a single source for the report that Jobs was doomed.

In it, Diaz went well over the top by using this one source as confirmation that Jobs was “declining rapidly” and “it may be even worse than we imagined” and, quoting the source directly, “Apple is choosing to remove the hype factor strategically vs. letting the hype destroy Apple when the inevitable news comes later this spring.”

That sounds pretty bad to me. Inevitable, of course, always means taxes or death and dying. As in pancreatic cancer returning. As in start cuing the pallbearers. Get Marcus Welby, M.D., stat!

As it turned out, it was also a bit of a premature diagnosis by someone not a doctor but playing one on the Web, as Jobs countered the rumors with his own news yesterday in a terse letter that ended with the back of his hand to crepe-hangers like Diaz and his specious source:

“So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.”

So it’s done, right?

Sadly, no, it is not.

Not satisfied to be utterly wrong about relaying on a rotten source and posting it with a screaming headline and declaring someone on death’s door and then finding that perhaps he had a breath or two still in him–remind me never to tell Nick Denton I am feeling nauseous or I will be on my way to the morgue pronto–Gizmodo tried to twist its original story into a shape even the the malleable corpse in “Weekend at Bernies” could not get into, and got it wrong a second time yesterday.

Under the new title, “Steve Jobs Skips Macworld Because of His Health,” the new post started: “Looks like our source was partly right: Jobs’ condition was the a reason for his Macworld no-show.”

Except Jobs did not ever say that in his letter, except to note: “A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.”

Does the mean he quit Macworld because of that alone?

I have no idea and neither does Gizmodo, which seems to still have done no actual reporting on this issue it makes such a big deal of. Instead, the post whips up implied guilt without a shred of real reporting.

It could be true, it could be false. But Diaz does not help us, except to just ask us to take his say-so. It’s profoundly simplistic and reeks of an agenda.

More importantly, here’s the problem with portraying the Macworld withdrawal as so cut and dried: At all corporations I have ever covered, big decisions are nearly always a complex mix of emotion and business and chaos.

To wit: It is well known Apple hates Macworld, and having to introduce a fabulous new product at a weird time too.

My guess–and that is all it is–as to what seems plausible: Apple had no wow products to show. Execs have wanted out for a while. Jobs felt lousy and wanted to try to get better. A confluence of events seems more likely than one big Apple plot.

But it did not stop Gizmodo from declaring it so, by egregiously reading into Jobs’s letter, as if it were tea leaves and Diaz was that wacky divination professor from “Harry Potter.”

As Hermione Granger said of her: Rubbish.

Then, worse, Diaz goes for the full pretzel, noting about the Jobs letter:

“What does this mean? First and foremost, that his health is not declining rapidly now, as our source affirmed. Thank god for that. Like I said in the original article, I hoped our source was wrong about this point, and they were. The source’s information was probably from earlier in the year.”

What? Earlier this year? Probably? This is a whole new kind of backpedaling.

Actually, when you boil it down to the really important issue, it was posting the information about Jobs being on his deathbed that was wrong, and no amount of fobbing off blame on the source can fix that.

All this could have been solved if Apple were more forthcoming, of course, but this is akin to wishing for a miracle cure.

Apple should be, obviously, although the company is also well-known for its secretive behavior, which continues to surprise people covering it, despite it being business as usual for almost its entire history.

And, as the Gizmodo follow piece does correctly point out, the Jobs-Is-Fine-and-Dandy reporting done by CNBC’s Jim Goldman (and clearly fed by Apple) also went too far in the other direction and oddly ignored the obvious signs of some kind of health issue.

And Goldman’s own claim later that he was sort-of right was just as silly. Neither he or Diaz seems to be.

Jobs is not well as Goldman claimed, but neither is he dying as Diaz said (Sorry, Jesus, I mean your source said, although you talked to that source, used the info, typed it in and let it fly.)

Now, as the professional mourners disperse, it remains to be seen how much longer this will go on. My guess is for a while, since the obsession with Jobs’s health seems infinite in its creepiness.

(I know the drill, it’s only mentioned constantly because it is all about Jobs’s value to the stock, and that is the reason for the intense attention still, even though even Martians have gotten the message about his troubled pancreas. Right.)

But here is one thing I do know for sure: In a letter he was forced to write, Jobs seem to have declared yesterday firmly that he still has a life.

Now, everyone else should get a life too and move on.

MicroHoo: Can We All Get Along? Um, No.

Kara Swisher — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:05:09 +0000

Another day, another round of internecine battling among the main players of the Internet’s longest-running soap opera.

That would be Yahoo, Microsoft and Carl Icahn.

The trio are fighting over the fate of Yahoo (YHOO) and who should control the iconic Web company.

It is a tussle that will make for daily drama until Yahoo’s Aug. 1 annual meeting, where Icahn will seek victory in his proxy fight for the company.

Who will prevail?

Will it be Yahoo’s current management, led by Co-Founder and CEO Jerry Yang, who has not exactly distinguished himself as an agent of change at the company that has surely needed it for a good long time now?

Or perhaps Microsoft (MSFT), now fully led by CEO Steve Ballmer, a company that has spent the better part of the decade not getting the Internet and flubbing most of its obvious advantages in the space?

Or Icahn, the activist investor who is not exactly a Web 2.0 kind of guy (he’s not a Web 1.0 kind of guy either, or–let’s be honest–a Web Anything.0 kind of guy)?

For shareholders, it must feel like deciding among the lesser of three evils.

Indeed, this is clearly no Harry Potter versus He-Who-Cannot- Be-Named kind of battle, even though it will be portrayed like that by all sides over the next weeks.

Already comes the dueling and deeply conflicting statements this weekend and today, after the collapse of yet another round of talks over Microsoft’s interest in buying Yahoo’s search business, in which Icahn played the peacemaker.

(Nice work, Carl! Now everyone hates each other 312 percent more! Mission accomplished!)

While such fighting is to be expected, some of the conflict will probably be much more subtle, such as the poor-little-me-but-chin-up wet kiss that Yang got from the New York Times today.

Yang even got to call Icahn a “fox in a henhouse” in the very first line of the story.

That gift was quickly followed by this doozie: “‘I don’t mean to impugn anyone’s personal integrity,’ Mr. Yang quickly added. ‘Let it never be said that Mr. Yang lacks manners.’”

But why don’t we just let it be said: Yang meant to impugn Icahn and meant to be rude, which is exactly what he has to do to save his job.

And, so it will be.

Today, for example, sources close to Microsoft were trying to make their case that the search deal they offered to Yahoo was a good one and then stressed it did not have to include Icahn, even though Icahn was deeply enmeshed in the talks last week.

And the offer was definitely a better deal: It had a much better revenue guarantee that was linked to homepage traffic versus search queries; it upped TAC (traffic acquisition cost) rates; it had a nice-sized investment and a good loan rate; and it took costs off the books.

It also featured a lot of things Yahoo management could do itself–like sell off its Asian assets.

But it was a good start, in a lot of ways.

Yet, as with all communications between Yahoo and Microsoft, acrimony instead reigned over the Icahn involvement and alleged take-it-or-leave-it deadlines and other bickered-over items, none of which makes a thimble’s worth of difference.

Ipso facto, the search deal flopped in a big, loud and unattractive heap.

For those who want to clear away the noise, here are the actual stakes:

Yang simply does not want to sell his search business wholesale and wants a second chance to try to revive Yahoo, with him or people picked by him and the board, despite his inability to do so thus far. He would sell the entire company if that’s the only choice.

Microsoft wants to own Yahoo’s search business, in order to try to at least stay in the game with its true archrival Google (GOOG), and it will do just about anything to make that happen. It does not want to buy all of Yahoo anymore.

And Icahn? Well, he just wants to be paid back what he shelled out for Yahoo shares, and a little more to save face. He does not care how this happens, as long as it does.

None of this, of course, has anything to do with what’s good for Yahoo–a site of immense and powerful assets that are now being abused daily by this twisted circus.

Of course, all sides profess to care about that and I think they even believe they mean it.

They really don’t, of course, because if they did, they would find a way to come to an agreement before the situation degenerates further.

In the New York Times article, Yang, who I believe would fall on his sword if need be, noted: “‘This isn’t about me,’ he said, with a sense of earnestness. ‘It’s about what’s going to happen to Yahoo.’”

But, if this keeps up–and I mean this with a sense of earnestness–what’s going to happen to Yahoo is a true shame.

Or, as Voldemort taunted Harry Potter: “You will lose everything.”

Why Doesn't Microsoft Buy Time Warner? AOL, Bebo, AIM and Harry Potter!

Kara Swisher — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:42:23 +0000

Yesterday, you could feel the testiness jump right over the phone from several people close to Microsoft whom I spoke to about Yahoo’s latest gambit to sell its blue-sky growth plan to Wall Street.

Like a lot of Yahoo’s various moves of late–dating promiscuously with other suitors, handing out pricey severance plans to all employees and continuing to spurn the advances of the software giant without a raise in its $31-a-share bid–the projections by Yahoo (YHOO) that its sunny future warranted at least $40 a share were not taken well in Redmond.

In fact, the company–although it may ultimately have to–is quite adamant about not raising the price. “Sooner or later, they’ll run out of things to do,” said one Microsoft (MSFT) exec.

Sooner would be better, as paying $40 a share would add about $12 billion more the the $41 billion price tag, which would make it one of the biggest tech mergers in history if consummated.

But for the same high, high price, why not take all that money and buy AOL and the giant media conglomerate attached to it?

Yes, I mean Time Warner! Home of AOL and Harry Potter!

This thought occurred to me as I watched the stock of Time Warner (TWX) drift further downward over the last weeks, even though it has tried to give itself a shot in the digital arm by paying $850 million in cash to buy the Bebo social network.

Current price tag for the whole ball of TWX: $51.5 billion. (Of course, debt brings the price up to about $85 billion to $87 billion, but this is just a fantasy, so indulge me.)

And for that you not only get the relatively decent AOL online ad network, you also get a social network in Bebo (No. 3, but Microsoft has only a tiny piece of Facebook), the powerful AIM instant messaging service, a just-as-famous brand name in need of some TLC, some nice Web properties and, best of all, a chance to shove out Google (GOOG) from its search-ad relationship with AOL (Google owns 5% of the unit, which it bought for $1 billion).

Plus, all kinds of stuff you can either keep or spin off: powerful cable assets, top-notch television and movie studios (those cool “Entourage” guys on HBO!), the biggest magazine company (People, Sports Illustrated!), cable networks (Anderson Cooper and Larry King on CNN) and much, much more.

Frankly, compared to Yahoo, Time Warner kind of feels like a bargain, and they know from getting taken over by digital types.

Years ago, as I reported in my book, “aol.com,” Microsoft Co-Founder and longtime leader Bill Gates once said to AOL Founder and then-CEO Steve Case in 1993: “I can buy 20% of you or I can buy all of you. Or I can go into this business myself and bury you.”

How ironic would it be if that promise finally came true?

Harry Potter Is the New iPhone

Kara Swisher — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:52:46 +0000

With the mania around the iPhone subsiding a bit (and just a bit, until the memory of this David Pogue–let’s just say it plain, shall we?–Broadway music video, called “iPhone: The Musical,” for the New York Times about the Apple device also subsides), BoomTown has almost no shame in picking up on the Harry Potter phenom that is about to grip the world when books are officially for sale just after the stroke of midnight Saturday morning.

The Web has played an increasingly big role in the hubbub, as the books have been released over the last decade, with all sorts of online sites related to the young wizard’s exploits getting massive traffic.

On the downside, of course, has been the release of what look to be actual pages from JK Rowling’s seventh and last in her series: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” which is quite a naughty thing to do.

I still read all the spoilers, of course, and am dying to tell Walt, a big fan of the Potter oeuvre (don’t hate me, but me, not so much). I will not, of course, as he can wait until the book is out to enjoy it.

It seems he will, given the review published today by the enterprising New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani, who managed to buy a copy from a bookstore and post here.

She liked the book overall, writing that: “It is Ms. Rowling’s achievement in this series that she manages to make Harry both a familiar adolescent–coping with the banal frustrations of school and dating–and an epic hero, kin to everyone from the young King Arthur to Spider-Man and Luke Skywalker.”

But where would we be without videos about it all? Here are two on YouTube, of course.

One is a strangely satisfying puppet show (who knew Voldemort’s name could be sung to the Chordettes’ catchy “Lollipop” tune?).

The other a perfect takeoff of the 1970s sitcom “Welcome Back, Kotter” called, of course, “Welcome Back, Potter” and complete with a dumb laugh track–I never knew I could miss Arnold Horshack’s bray so much.